Someone wrecked my flowers and my mailbox, but they left behind a mirror. Hopefully, someone can help me identify what it belonged to, as I can not find this part anywhere. The part number is 4107-09022-02. Thanks.
How about posting a photo of the mirror?
The prefix number doesn’t sound familiar to me and regrettably this may be something you have to brush aside and move on without agonizing over it. The police are not going to put out an APB and even if a car is found with a missing mirror whose to say the mirror you have came off of that car. It would have to be proven unless someone admitted to it.
About all I can suggest is go cruising through the 'hood and keep your eyes peeled for a car in the color with a missing mirror. If you see one call the cops. If the PD shows up to question someone the miscreant may go into a little bit of panic mode and 'fess up. Or not.
I don’t know where you live, but in my area if I called the police for stuff like that, they would not be happy. You just have to get over it IMHO (as difficult as it is). I have been thinking about a security camera system myself, but then I have to install and run it and even then not sure how much help it would be.
Call the cops. Let them investigate.
I came home once to find tire ruts in my yard. This was in early spring before the mowing season and the roads had become slick. However, there was a note in the door and the person left his phone number and said to call and he would have his insurance company take care of the damage. I called the person and thanked him, but told him that I could fix it with 10 minutes with my rototiller and some grass seed that I had on hand.
On the other hand, I am sure that Mrs. Tridaq destroyed my flower garden and never owned up to it. I “planted” plastic flowers along the front of the house just after we had snow in February. A couple of days later my flower garden disappeared. The tracks in the snow matched her shoes, but I never got a confession.
My advice would be to fix it and move on. About 40 years ago in the apartment building I heard a horn honking. Obviously someone picking up a car pooler and late. So I looked out the window and he backed right into my Corvair doing considerable damage to the fender. I saw the car and a couple weeks later it turned up at the apartment again so I could get the licence. I really go no where with the police and no one was man enough to own up to it. I just fixed it.
Now a couple blocks down, a guy living on the corner had his fence and flowers run over so many times, he finally planted about a half dozen 12x12 cedar beams with the ends pointed. It doesn’t look too bad and is still standing like it was some 40 years later. I don’t know if anyone has been unfortunate enough to miss the turn again or not but his flowers never got damaged again.
In a Zen sorta way, the miscreant was already punished, right? $100 or so…IF all that was damaged was a mirror.
P.S. Technically speaking, as the mailbox is “property of the Postmaster General,” can you even recover for damages?
My wife and I had this same problem a few years ago. We installed several steel poles set in concrete along the edge of our yard. People don’t tend to drive in our yard anymore since there is still not one single scrape on any of the poles. Amazing.
I had a drunk run off the road years ago and up onto my property and got stuck up to the axles in mud. The problem was, he figured he’d just keep going…make a big loop in the yard and continue right back out onto the road. The problem was there were three wood fences that he took along with him.
Even though the mailbox is property of the postmaster general, you can still charge them for the new mailbox and the material to install it. At least in Wisconsin!!!
Yosemite
I 'spose the Postmaster owns the mailbox but she never paid for mine or helped me replace it. Interestingly in our town, if the snow plow whacks your mailbox and post, they will pay to fix it, but you have to be able to show that it was properly placed according to regulation. Plus you have to do your own temporary fix until Spring. I’m on a curve and the plow always stays a foot or two away from my box. But that means I have to clear the snow or the mailman would get stuck and not deliver the mail for me and my neighbors.
looks like a 2007-2009 hundai, Let it go. you can be sued for placing non breakawy mailboxes, and someone has damages, or loss of life. What do you prefer replacing a mailbox or being liable for someones death?
...the mailbox is property of the postmaster general...
Urban myth.
^You really shouldn’t post false info just to stir the pot, @insightful.
"Mailboxes are considered federal property, and federal law (Title 18, United States Code, Section 1705), makes it a crime to vandalize them (or to injure, deface or destroy any mail deposited in them). Violators can be fined up to $250,000, or imprisoned for up to three years, for each act of vandalism."
The idea behind this site is to enable others to become MORE knowledgable, NOT to take ignorance and smear it around…
“innate ignorance”, that’s pretty harsh from you @meanjoe75fan.
I thought this sight was to educate, but also to have some compassion for those that may get the facts wrong. Why not just come on here and berate people that make a bad diagnosis or replace a wrong part.
When a fellow hit mine and he was taken to court for damages, the judge didn’t tell him to write a check to the Postmaster General, but to me to cover the costs of the replacement and my time.
By law the mailbox may be protected as property of the postmaster General so that the courts have some basis for protecting them…they are placed in the right of way…but I’m pretty sure the law would award the damages to the person whose mailbox was destroyed. They did in my case.
Let me know if you want me to track down the judge, if he’s still alive, so you can tell him how wrong his judgement was.
Yosemite
^Don’t call me out like that unless you’re damn sure you got your facts right! Especially, don’t call me out on postal matters–5-year USPS veteran.
If he thought I was wrong, he could have done his “due diligence” PRIOR to smearing me: I did. To do otherwise is slovenly.
I’ll take out "innate, " though: that changes the thought to “your facts are incorrect” rather than “incorrectness is intrinsic to your nature.”
“Don’t call me out like that”…damn that sounds like bar fight talk.
I always thought this site as being more civil than that.
Being a 5 year veteran of the USPS is a far cry from being an expert on the law regarding the replacement of the mail box.
Yosemite
"Being a 5 year veteran of the USPS is a far cry from being an expert on the law regarding the replacement of the mail box."
Not necessarily, but that’s the way it worked out in this instance. He quoted me deilberately and shot off about “urban myth.” Hopefully, a sufficient correction–tinely administered–will avoid repeat behavior.
A $50 mailbox got hit seriously. Move on. Sucks but it happens. A DUI or old person could have nailed it and simply unaware, it happens.
An accident happened not malicious destruction nor vandalism. That is easily proven by the broken mirror.
"Mailboxes are considered federal property, and federal law (Title 18, United States Code, Section 1705), makes it a crime to vandalize them (or to injure, deface or destroy any mail deposited in them). Violators can be fined up to $250,000, or imprisoned for up to three years, for each act of vandalism."
If we could enforce that…our town would go bankrupt because of all the mailboxes destroyed by the plow drivers this past winter.